Context of '1970s: ’Ecoterrorist’ Groups Begin Operations in US'

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A number of small, loosely affiliated “ecoterrorist” groups begin to form, mostly in California and West Coast areas of the United States, though their operations are evident throughout the nation. Some of the more prominent groups include: the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976); Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997); and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC—see 1998). Generally, the groups’ ideology embraces the concept of using property damage to hinder or stop the exploitation of animals and the destruction of the environment. These organizations usually target the operations of companies in related industries, or sometimes terrorize executives and employees of these firms. The companies usually targeted include automobile dealerships, housing developments, forestry companies, corporate and university-based medical research laboratories, restaurants, and fur farms. As of 2005, no one will have been injured in these attacks, though the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) will predict that the steady escalation of violence from the groups may result in injury or even death. The groups will cause millions of dollars in damage to property and items, usually through arson, bombings, and vandalism. The “ecoterrorist” groups tend to be small, and made up of environmental and animal rights activists on the “fringes” of the mainstream movements who have become frustrated with the slow pace of change. Some members are also affiliated with one or another of the various “anarchist” groups. The ADL will contrast the typical “ecoterrorist” group with racist and white supremacist groups, noting that their organizational structure tends to be extremely egalitarian and sometimes almost nonexistent: “Unlike racial hate groups with established hierarchies and membership requirements, for example, an activist can become a member of the ecoterror movement simply by carrying out an illegal action on its behalf.” [Anti-Defamation League, 2005] The term “ecoterrorism” does not gain widespread usage until after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) will note that “members of Congress, conservative commentators, and the FBI [will join] in a chorus decrying the acts as ‘ecoterrorism.’” Charles Muscoplat, the dean of agriculture at the University of Minnesota—a targeted site—says: “These are clearly terroristic acts. Someone could get hurt or killed in a big fire like we had.” ALF spokesman David Barbarash (see 1998) says in response: “I mean, what was the Boston Tea Party if not a massive act of property destruction?… Property damage is a legitimate political tool called economic sabotage, and it’s meant to attack businesses and corporations who are profiting from the exploitation, murder, and torture of either humans or animals, or the planet.… [T]o call those acts terrorism is ludicrous.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/2002]

A semiofficial logo for the Animal Liberation Front. [Source: Animal Liberation Front]The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) forms. It is widely considered the US’s most active “ecoterrorist” movement (see 1970s) and focuses primarily on attacking companies that perpetuate cruelty to animals, often in the form of animal experimentation. It is very loosely organized, and composed of anonymous underground cells that mount operations to rescue animals from what it calls “places of abuse” and, it says, to “inflict economic damage to those who profit from the misery and exploitation of animals.” ALF traces its origins to a group of British activists in the late 1960s called the Hunt Saboteurs Association, whose prime goal was to disrupt fox hunts. In 1972, according to the anonymously published “ALF Primer,” “after effectively ending a number of traditional hunting events across England, members of the Hunt Saboteurs decided more militant action was needed, and thus began the Band of Mercy.” The Band of Mercy went farther than its parent organization, and in 1974 two of its members, Ronnie Lee and Cliff Goodman, were jailed for firebombing a vivisection research center in Great Britain (see 1974). When Lee is released from prison in 1976, he and some of his Band of Mercy colleagues found the ALF. The organization first begins operations in Great Britain, but quickly moves to America and begins escalating events. Its first known operation will be in 1979, when ALF activists break into a medical school and release animals being used for research (see 1979). Before it establishes a small press office in 1991, ALF’s activities will be publicized and praised by a somewhat more mainstream animal rights group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). [Anti-Defamation League, 2005] The ALF primer explains the “leaderless resistance” model followed by the group: “Due to the illegal nature of ALF activities, activists work anonymously, and there is no formal organization to the ALF. There is no office, no leaders, no newsletter, and no official membership. Anyone who carries out direct action according to ALF guidelines is a member of the ALF.” The primer states the following as ALF guidelines: To liberate animals from places of abuse, i.e. fur farms, laboratories, factory farms, etc. and place them in good homes where they may live out their natural lives free from suffering. To inflict economic damage to those who profit from the misery and exploitation of animals. To reveal the horror and atrocities committed against animals behind locked doors by performing nonviolent direct actions and liberations. To take all necessary precautions against hurting any animal, human and nonhuman. The primer states: “In the third section it is important to note the ALF does not, in any way, condone violence against any animal, human or non-human. Any action involving violence is by its definition not an ALF action, any person involved not an ALF member. The fourth section must be strictly adhered to. In over 20 years, and thousands of actions, nobody has ever been injured or killed in an ALF action.” [Animal Liberation Front, 2002 ]

Rod Coronado. [Source: Fur Commission (.com)]Rod Coronado, an animal rights advocate affiliated with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976) and a Vancouver organization, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, is jailed for his roles in a 1987 arson at a University of California-Davis veterinary laboratory and a 1992 firebombing at an animal research laboratory at Michigan State University. The UC-D bombing caused over $3.5 million in property damage. Coronado will serve three and a half years in prison. He will become one of ALF’s public representatives, lecturing around the country on behalf of ALF and other extremist animal rights and environmentalist groups (see 1970s). Coronado will tell a Michigan State University reporter, “I wish I could do it again,” referring to the MSU bombing. “I have absolutely no regrets, and I hope the same thing continues to happen at MSU and every other college campus that does animal research.” [Anti-Defamation League, 2005] The third edition of the ALF Primer will quote an anti-vivisection activist in defense of Coronado. Susan Paris, the president of the above-ground organization Americans for Medical Progress (AMP) will say: “Because of terrorist acts by animal activists like Coronado, crucial research projects have been delayed or scrapped. More and more of the scarce dollars available to research are spent on heightened security and higher insurance rates. Promising young scientists are rejecting careers in research. Top-notch researchers are getting out of the field.” A 1993 report to Congress (see 1979-1993) made a similar observation, stating, “Where the direct, collateral, and indirect effects of incidents such as this are factored together, ALF’s professed tactic of economic sabotage can be considered successful, and its objectives, at least towards the victimized facility, fulfilled.” [Animal Liberation Front, 2002 ]

The original Earth Liberation First logo. [Source: Original ELF (.com)]The Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an extremist offshoot of Earth First! (see 1980 and After) founded in Britain in 1992, steps up the vandalism and violence of its parent organization. It consciously models itself after the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976) in having little to no hierarchical organization, and consists of what it calls “autonomous groups of people” who are “anonymous not only to the public but also to one another.” The ELF writes that it exists to “inflict economic damage on those profiting from the destruction and exploitation of the natural environment,” and “to reveal and educate the public on the atrocities committed against the earth and all species that populate it.” In a promotional video, “Igniting the Revolution,” ELF says it now knows “that to be successful in the struggle to protect the Earth, more extreme tactics must be utilized. Thus the Earth Liberation Front was born.” It first garners major US public attention in 1997, when ELF activists burn down a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) horse corral in Oregon (see 1997). [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/2002; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

One of several unofficial logos of the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty organization. [Source: Kitty Liberation Front (.com)]The BBC broadcasts a graphic documentary detailing the mistreatment and abuse of animals by Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a British research firm. Angered animal rights activists in Britain begin to pressure financial institutions associated with HLS to drop their support of the company as a means to force it to stop performing animal testing. The campaign grows into the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) organization, which models itself on the tactics and ideologies espoused by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997), among others. SHAC quickly migrates across the Atlantic to the US and into Europe; its activists will claim responsibility for a number of bombings and acts of vandalism and harassment. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

Jeff “Free” Luers. [Source: Free Jeff Luers (.org)]Two Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997) activists, Jeff “Free” Luers and Craig “Critter” Marshall, firebomb a car dealership in Eugene, Oregon, destroying 36 sport utility vehicles (SUVs). Luers will be convicted and sentenced to over 22 years in prison; Marshall will receive over five years. Luers and Marshall will become two of the most well-known jailed “ecoterrorists” (see 1970s), and will be the subject of intensive public efforts to gain their release. “Failure to support our prisoners is tantamount to sanctioning repression by the state,” an ELF statement will proclaim. ELF and other environmental, anarchist, and animal rights organizations will solicit funds for their legal representation, create Web sites to garner publicity, and organize concerts on their behalf. Both ELF and a Eugene organization called Green Anarchy label Luers and Marshal “prisoners of war.” [Anti-Defamation League, 2005; Eugene Register-Guard, 12/18/2009]

Three teenagers affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997) environmental activist group burn down luxury housing units under construction on Long Island, New York. ELF activists take credit for two more fires in the area, along with numerous acts of vandalism, including breaking windows and painting “Meat is Murder” on a McDonald’s corporate office. Suffolk County Detective Charles Dohrenwend says: “We have to devote a lot of energy to this thing because these people are not going away. They are dangerous.” The Long Island housing units are set ablaze with crude, homemade explosive devices at about 6 a.m. No one is injured in the fire. Three houses are damaged by fire and smoke; a fourth has the words “ELF,” “Stop Urban Sprawl,” “If you build it we will burn it,” and “Burn the rich” spray-painted on exterior walls in red paint. Damage is estimated at $35,000 to $40,000. An ELF press release will be sent out the next day claiming that the fires are “an early New Year’s gift to Long Island’s environment destroyers,” and saying ELF is trying to cost “the rich sprawl corporations” enough to force them to stop. ELF has long said that “urban sprawl” causes widespread damage to wildlife habitats and natural features. Local environmentalists condemn the arson, but say overdevelopment of Long Island was still a valid concern, as developers of new housing projects vie for limited open space on which to build. Richard Amper of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society says: “The reaction of these terrorists is wrong. But they are not wrong about the fact of overdevelopment of Long Island. Just because they are behaving like terrorists doesn’t mean we are not overbuilt.” The ELF press release also says that the arson is done in support for a local animal rights activist, Andrew Stepanian, who was recently convicted of throwing a brick through the display windows of a fur store in Huntington. Two months later, three teenagers, Matthew Rammelkamp, George Mashkow, and Jared McIntyre, will plead guilty to setting the fires, and will agree to cooperate with federal authorities investigating ELF. Rammelkamp will say he learned of the site from the ELF Web site. According to Rammelkamp’s testimony, he “obtained and received information from the ELF Web site and used that information in furtherance of that conspiracy. I and others then reported, by press release, those acts.” It is unclear if Rammelkamp, Mashkow, and McIntyre are active members of ELF (which has virtually no hierarchical organizational structure and no official membership lists), independent sympathizers, or merely used the ELF information as an excuse to commit arson. It is common practice for ELF and other such organizations (see 1970s) to post “target” listings on Web sites and, when someone burns or vandalizes those targets, to post news of the actions on the sites. Thomas Liotti, Rammelkamp’s lawyer, will say: “I think these kids had the best of intentions. In no way are they involved in any organized, national ELF effort.… This is a little bit McCarthyesque. What organizations are terrorist organizations? Can 16-year-old kids be charged in federal court?… I don’t think the federal government should be involved in this case. To me, it is nothing more than an arson case, and [Rammelkamp] should be afforded youthful-offender treatment in state court.” Mashkow’s lawyer, Charles C. Russo, will say: “I am not representing an environmental activist. I am representing a 17-year-old misguided kid who basically made the monumental mistake in his life.” Russo will say that Mashkow does not claim membership in ELF and is remorseful for his participation. [New York Times, 1/3/2001; New York Times, 1/8/2001; New York Times, 2/14/2001; New York Times, 2/15/2001; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

Earth First! (see 1980 and After) activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cheney are acquitted of charges resulting from a pipe-bomb detonation in Bari’s Subaru station wagon. Bari and Cheney were driving to an Earth First! rally in 1990 when the pipe bomb exploded in Bari’s car. FBI agents charged them with conspiring to plant the bomb, but Bari and Cheney consistently denied any such plans or any knowledge of the bomb, saying they had been falsely painted as “ecoterrorists” (see 1970s) and in fact had been the targets of an assassination attempt. The jury finds that FBI and other law enforcement agents violated their civil rights, and frees them. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/2002]

John E. Lewis of the FBI’s counterterrorism division tells the Senate Judiciary Committee of an “upswing in violent rhetoric and tactics” among ecoterrorists (see 1970s), and says that in recent years two specific organizations, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997), “have become the most active criminal extremist elements in the United States.” [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

Craig Rosebraugh, the former spokesman for the environmental activist Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997 and 1996 and After), announces the launch of a new quarterly magazine, Resistance, Journal of the Earth Liberation Movement. Rosebraugh, a Portland, Oregon, native, operates the magazine out of Arizona, where he attends law school at Arizona State University; he co-edits the magazine with a number of other environmental and animal rights activists. The magazine calls itself “radical” and names Shell Oil Company as its “Ecoterrorist of the Season.” The magazine is nationally distributed and is available through chain bookstores. Rosebraugh tells an interviewer that he wants his readers to understand that the environment “is being destroyed because government and industry are making a lot of money off that destruction.… ‘Resistance’ was created to inform readers not only of the dangerous state of the planet, but also the urgency of action. The magazine features discussions on the strategy, theory, news, and frontline actions of a new emerging environmental movement.” The magazine advocates boycotts, sit-ins, and “economic sabotage,” which Rosebraugh describes as “nonviolent property destruction” that targets profits made by environmental exploitation. Rosebraugh says he became active in the environmental resistance movement (which some call “ecoterrorism”—see 1970s) because in 50 years of acceptable, aboveground protests and resistance, little progress has been made in reversing global warming and other environmental depredations: “It is the profit motive that is driving environmental destruction. So it only makes logical sense to work to directly remove that profit motive from these entities so they either are persuaded to stop their harmful practices or go out of business.” He says he “definitely” supports environmental activists breaking the law: “Historically, in order for any major social or political movement to make progress people in each case had to step outside social law.” Rosebraugh says he and many other ELF activists departed the ELF after a 2006 federal crackdown that saw many ELF members go to jail; since that crackdown, he says, “the more radical end of the environmental movement has really kind of dropped off.” [Oregonian, 10/19/2009; Eugene Weekly, 10/28/2009]

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